Advising on the commercial impact of technology and
    market changes in telecoms, software and IT services

Cognos provides IBM with a logical extension to its information management product portfolio and plugs some functional gaps in the company's Information on Demand (IOD) vision.

Following on from a strong fiscal 2007, Microsoft has had a very good fiscal 1Q08. Its lead in the software market still seems unassailable.

IBM is moving from strength to strength thanks to its success in integrating once disparate assets to deliver true business solutions, rather than just IT solutions.

Symantec has grown rapidly both by organic growth and by acquisition. It is now much broader than security and storage management. It has an enviable financial record and an impressive product set.

It is still early to predict how well Teradata will fare as an independent firm. But it's certainly no start-up and needs to ensure its momentum continues by regularly delivering new product releases and enhancements and also product expansion and innova

The OATH group has not yet made a big impact. It is one of many initiatives in identity management coming from both the open source and proprietary camps. What has it achieved, how does it relate to other initiatives, and what are its prospects?

McAfee intends to acquire Reconnex, a data loss prevention (DLP) vendor. This expands McAfee's product scope, and underlines the increasing importance of DLP in the market. Other vendors need to improve their usability and ease of configuration.

Software AG, the Germany-based infrastructure software company has been buoyed by its acquisition of webMethods – turning in the best results in its 38-year history as it closed its full-year 2007 financials.